Cartoonite

*Note to self: Christmas holidays is a poor time to volunteer to do work. I have spent far less time working on this project than I intended and, for that, I apologize. It seems the party/slacker attitude I adopt during the holidays is still very much intact, regardless of the fact that I long ago killed off the last remaining shreds of anything that even vaguely resembled a social life. I suspect what little work I have done has been largely rendered obsolete by this point, but I will post it now anyways, just in case it is of some use. Some of the things I have read in this thread lead me to believe that there are further issues beyond those I documented that I never found as I have yet to actually test these scripts. Hopefully I will have some time to work on this soon, either moving forward with my own partial solution or, more likely, combining small parts of my own to the ideas presented by the other, far more vocal, contributors. I did start a new job just this week though, so I won't make any promises. Good luck with this, DLF. And, again, I'm sorry that I haven't really been much help. SP2_Update_Project.rar

Sheesh. I go away for just a few days and prathapml hijacks my support thread. Anyway, I'm glad to see that you seem to be progressing nicely with this, Ctwizzy. It also seems that you are moving away from areas in which I can be of much assistance, unfortunately. Your major stumbling block, for lack of a better term, at the moment seems to be partitioning, a subject about which I already proclaimed my ignorance way back at the start of this thread. There is one thing that I noticed in reading through this thread, though, that may be worth pointing out. It seems to me that making two partitions each 12-15GB in size serves no real purpose. Although I'm unsure exactly what prathapml is talking about when saying larger partitions are not "bootable natively," it seems to me that once you cross the 7.5GB limit, there is no reason to cap your system partition size. The games installed on the second partition would be no more useable after a reinstallation of Windows than would be any "regular" programs. They, too, have registry settings that need to be present in order to run properly. I have a friend who swears by installing games onto a second harddrive, but I don't believe installing them onto a second partition on the same harddrive would yield any kind of performance boost. You may get the best performance through installing the games on a partition on the second harddrive (as my friend swears he does), but, because in your particular case the second drive is much slower than the first, that may not hold true for you. I agree whole heartedly with this statement (posted while I was typing this, solely to make me feel old and slow, I'm sure). Like so many other aspects computing, this seems to be as much a matter of personal preference as anything else. (Except for this bit about "at least 3 partitions." Maybe I'll need to look into this, see what all the fuss is about. )Hope this helps. Keep up the good work. I figure at the rate you're going you'll be done long before I am, even if I did have a several-week head start.

I can see Astalavista's suggestion being useful for scripting purposes, but I think that level of detail is going a bit overboard. Certainly the guide should refernce the most commonly used ones (systemdrive, userprofile, windir, etc...), but I don't think a complete listing is required. Maybe include a note referencing the set command and how it can be used to get a list of available system variables.

You have already done it.[Data] AutoPartition=1This code in your answerfile tells Windows to automatically install onto the first partition with enough available free space and no previous installation of Windows. (The second part is important to keep in mind for future installs with this cd.) With the answer file you have created, it shouldn't make a difference. Windows defaults to formatting the system partition with the NTFS file system unless you explicitly tell it otherwise using the FileSystem line in the [unattended] portion of the answer file. Since you have not set this in your answer file, the Windows default of formatting with NTFS will be applied. Not exactly. There is a lot more involved with installing programs than just creating the files in the Program Files folder. For starters, many programs require registry settings to be modified, and/or created/deleted. These settings reside in the registry files on the system drive, and will not be preserved when you reformat. One solution to this is to use a registry tracker to monitor the installs, and then set up registry files to import the needed changes after the reinstall. This solution may not be an optimal one, however, if you are not already familiar with the Windows registry. The registry files are very sensitive. They contain all the information that tells Windows how to run. Incorrectly modifying these files can cause many errors, including rendering the PC unable to boot. I'm not sure exactly what you are looking to do. The default temp folder is %userprofile%\Local Settings\Temp. This will set your default temp folder as E:\Documents and Settings\<YourUserName>\Local Settings\Temp. If you have more than one user, you will have more than one temp directory. I'm sure there is a way to modify this if you want to, but I don't know what it is. Sorry.Hope this helps. Sounds like you've almost got your project completed. Good work. You seem to be making much faster progress than I am. (Maybe I should stop playing video games for a while and actually do some more work on it. )

In the future, please use the Code tag when posting stuff like the contents of your answer file. It makes it easier to distinguish when we are reading it over. As to your setup itself: I think you may want/need to create the primary partition (C: Drive) where Windows is to be installed before beginning, but other than that it looks great. On to your questions: Possibly just creating the primary partition for Windows, as mentioned above. I'm not sure. I don't think it will, and so I suggest creating it (formatting optional) manually beforehand. Consider: For all subsequent installs it will already exists anyway, so why not keep the same pattern for the first run? No, I don't believe so. They will, however, have to be formatted. (Can't have blank, unformatted partitions.) Yes. They will be assigned letters immediately following those assigned to the harddrives. Maybe a better idea would be to leave the second HDD out altogether while performing your base install? Once you know the new installation is running properly, then you can add the second drive back into the system and clean it up. You will have to do some fiddling with drive letters once you add the second HDD back in, but it will ensure that there is no conflict between the existing installation and the new one during the uA process. Again, I believe drive-letter is OS-dependant, so changing it won't really accomplish anything. Simply changing the boot order in the BIOS should be able to switch between the two installed OS's. Someone correct me if I'm wrong on this...Something just occured to me concerning your partition structure. What program are you using to partition your drive? More importantly, how are you configuring your partitions? Windows assigns drive-letters along very rigid guidlines, which is something you must keep in mind when designating alternate partitions for Program Files and Documents and Settings folders. I believe they are as follows, begining with C: Drive and assigning each drive-letter in sequence: All Primary partitions, in sequence, on the first HDD All Primary partitions, in sequence, of any other HDDs, in sequence All Extended partitions, in sequence, on the first HDD All Extended partitions, in sequence, on any other HDDs, in sequence All optical drives What this suggests to me is, in your particular case, D: Drive will be assigned to the single-partition secondary HDD rather than the desired second partition of the first HDD. If all three partitions on the first HDD are created as primaries, this may not be an issue. Nor will it affect you if you remove the second HDD during your test phase. However, it could still be a possible issue during future reinstalls if the drives are not partitioned "properly." I'm not sure what the best solution would be; either designating E: and F: in the place of D: and E: (and removing the option of testing without the second HDD in the system) or setting all three partitions on the first HDD as primary and chancing that I am wrong about how Windows determines drive-letter. If I get a chance I will try to run some tests on this and get back to you with the results. In the meantime, be aware of this potential pitfall and do some testing/research of your own. Good luck. Keep posting back with your progress/setbacks.

Chocolate Whipped Cream (It does SO exist...) Cake or Ice Cream?

At least you got it solved. Thanks for posting the solution that finally worked for you. Hopefully this will let some future person with a similar problem blow only 3 hours on it. Good luck with the rest of your project, and don't hesitate to start a new thread if you have any further issues.

Thanks for adding that, Nologic. It is for exactly this reason that I love the quote in my signature. Now I know, and knowing is half the battle.

Just a quick suggestion. There still seems to be a bit of confusion surrounding the way RunOnceEx.cmd and [GuiRunOnce] function. Specifically I think the phrase on the timeline page that states they execute "at the same time" could be explained a little better. See this thread here for an example of what I mean.

That's not quite right. RunOnceEx.cmd's true function is to import regkeys that define programs to be "Run once," at next boot up. The reason the page you linked to states that they run at the same time is that the guide also says to launch RunOnceEx.cmd from cmdlines.txt, thus importing the "Run-at-next-boot" keys before the very first time the PC boots. If you call your RunOnceEx script from within [GuiRunOnce], the keys will not be imported until the first boot, and therefore not executed until the second boot. I am assuming, of course, that your RunOnce script resembles the sample posted by moo. Hopefully this clears up some confusion. I have never used RunOnceEx.cmd myself yet, but I understand all those who do are calling it from cmdlines.txt. I will mention in the uA Guide suggested upgrades thread that maybe the explanation there could be made a little clearer.

Niether, that would require going to mass. Left or Right?

Not necessary. We are still looking, it just takes us a while to get back to you sometimes, that's all. Please keep in mind that all of my opinions are just that, my opinions only. I wouldn't say there is anything wrong with it, I just wouldn't choose to make my harddrive partitions that complicated. I don't know that I have ever suffered much in the way of performance loss by having only 2 or 3 partitions across my 2 harddrives. Maybe I have and I only don't realize it because I have never put the effort into setting up a more complex system, but I think my life is complicated enough without over-complicating my harddrive partitions. I think maybe I explained this poorly. I wouldn't suggest moving hardware around within the PC until you are ready to reformat and install your new Windows OS. Once you have your uA CD completed to your specifications (this is where virtual environments come in handy), then you can disassemble your PC, move parts around, and repartion the drives as needed.I suggest making a backup off all the data on the 160G drive that you want to keep, so that you can repartition it cleanly without having to worry about destroying any data. Once the 160G is partitioned you can copy data to be saved off of the smaller drive onto one (or more) of the larger drive's partitions and then repartition the smaller drive to it's new specs. What you will end up with is two harddrives partitioned however you want, with no OS installed on them. You can then boot your PC from your uA CD and (providing you configured it to do so) it will install Windows to the first partition on the first harddrive without any further input from you. Just to be clear: Do not follow the steps outlined above if you are not sure your uA CD is in working order unless you are willing to take the time to install Windows manually if the uA fails. Good idea. If you want your fresh install to be done using your brand new uA CD, don't kill the current one until the CD is ready. To the best of my knowledge, drive letter is completely OS-dependant. This step should be unnecessary. I fear this might cause you undue headaches with your clean install. I think, ideally, all your partion information should be configured before you install Windows. I don't think it would cause any actual errors, but adding drives/partitions once the OS has been installed may result in you having to manually assign drive letters in order to have them set up the way you want.For example: When I added a DVD burner to my system, it was given the first available drive-letter, which came after my virtual drives. I had to manually reassign the drive-letters to them so that the DVD burner would be listed after the CD-R but before the virtual drives. My advice is still to test in a virtual environment before taking your project "live." That way you will know before you even begin the process of moving to the new install that it will (theoretically) work out the way you planned. I say theoretically because there may always be slight variances in the way things behave between your virtual system and your real one. Device drivers are a prime example. Safely is a relative word. You can "safely" remove Outlook Express from your Windows installation using nLite or something similar. However, should you then decide, at a later date, to install Outlook, it will fail. While Windows in and of itself does not require the OE components, Outlook does. I've never tested this myself, just took it out of the nLite documentation. What this suggests to me, however, is that there may be other hidden dependancies that have yet to be found and so you may fiind that removing a "safe" component causes your system to crash simply because your specific situation required that component. Beyond that, there are times when the guides are just wrong. (No offense to the authors.) Like everyone else, the people who write the guides are human, and they, too, can make mistakes. The real reason I suggest testing with VPC or VMWare or whatnot is that only you know the specifics of your situation, so only you know what will or won't work. You are absolutely right. The steps provided on that page are a great place to start. So is the [components] section of the WINNT.SIF file. However, there is much more "junk" installed by Windows that you can't get rid of by these conventional means. To return to my previous example of Outlook Express: There is no simple file or folder to delete to remove this. Nor can you opt out of installing it via WINNT.SIF. You can choose not to install the shortcuts from here, but the program itself will still be installed. Removing it completely requires manually hacking it out of the cab files, or using a tool like nLite that will do it for you.A lot of this really boils down to personal preference. I personally prefer not to implement something unless I know it is going to work; hence I choose to test extensively in virtual environments. (I'm still working with my "old" Windows environment because I decided a couple weeks ago that I wanted to set up an uA CD to do my clean install. That project still isn't complete, though I could have manually reinstalled Windows several times by now.) Hopefully you are still finding my feedback more helpful than antagonizing. Good luck with your project, and Happy Holidays to you too.

Why are you running RunOnceEx.cmd from [GuiRunOnce]? I thought the idea was to run it from cmdlines.txt so that the programs get installed at first login, not second? Either way, the method your already using is the only way i can think of to call an installer of the cdrom from [GuiRunOnce]. I don't believe there is a system variable that will point to the Windows CD. If there was, that FOR statement we are all so familiar with would probably never have been written.

Sounds like your thoughts are running along the same path as mine, Alanoll. Just a matter of setting it all out and then ironing out the wrinkles.

Sorry DLF, it's taking me a while to get to this. It does look like you have most of it already done though. Hopefully I will have some time to take a closer look over the holiday weekend. The last couple days I've been too sleep-deprived to do something as simple as eay my breakfast coherently, nevermind attempting actual creativity. Quick question: Is the restart between installing SP2 and the hotfixes necessary or can we safely leave this step out? I do plan on testing this when I get the chance, but it would save me some work if someone already has a definite answer.

Polite is good, but only if you don't let anyone catch you at it. Welcome to the nut house.

Nice thinking, prathapml! Here I go again on another one of my long invloved trouble-shooting warpaths, when there may be just a simple solution to the problem. Post back, Radimus. Let us know if it has been solved.

Bearing in mind that I am still relatively new at this myself, your regtweaks look clean. Also, your post shows that the suspect registry entries are created under HKLM rather than HKCU. That suggests to me that the issue being generated during some portion of the automated setup process itself. Taken from MSFN's Unattended XP CD Guide: I believe we can rule out Text-mode Setup. There doesn't seem to be anything besides file-copying at that stage. Since you are using RunOnceEx, I assume you do not have anything in the [GuiRunOnce] section of WINNT.SIF, which means we can probably also ignore First Logon. This leaves only GUI-mode Setup. In looking at this timeline, I see four steps and three files that may be causing your problem. Steps 1 and 8 both make reference to WINNT.SIF (I believe), step 6 references svcpack.inf, and step 7 refers to cmdlines.txt. I suspect one, or more, of these three files has something in it that is causing the folders to be generated. In case you are unfamilliar with them, cmdlines.txt should be located in the $OEM$ folder while the other two should be in the I386 folder. It is possible that svcpack.inf may be cabbed as svcpack.in_. Take a look at these files, or post them here, to see if anything seems out of place. Hope this helps.

I bet he finished it so quickly just to make prathapml eat his words from another thread. Thanks Alanoll. Your hard work is much appreciated.

Classic Theme has no wallpaper set by default, that's why your modified Bliss.jp_ isn't being applied. You should be able to change it using the following regtweak: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\General] "BackupWallpaper"="c:\\windows\\web\\wallpaper\\custom.bmp" "Wallpaper"="c:\\windows\\web\\wallpaper\\custom.bmp" Edit the path and filename to suit your specific needs. If you have already created a new Bliss.jp_ cab file for your custom wallpaper, you should be able to code it as follows: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\General] "BackupWallpaper"="c:\\windows\\web\\wallpaper\\bliss.jpg" "Wallpaper"="c:\\windows\\web\\wallpaper\\bliss.jpg" I'm not sure of the correct file extension since the original bliss file is a bitmap. I think setup will uncab your modified one to bliss.jpg, it's original state, though.

Could you explain what exactly you mean by "blocked access?" Are you unable to access shared files and folders? Are you unable to see the computer when browsing the network? Are you unable to communicate with the computer at all (even a ping via IP address is un-returned)?

Reformatting would probably fix this. Seriously, though, you need to give a little more detail. I'm not sure there is enough here to get you a solution to your problem. Is the beep you are getting a simple beep such as the PC makes after a successful POST, or is it a Windows wav being played through the PC speaker? Without knowing the specifics of your sounds configuration, there is no way to know what's causing this sound to be played. My sound scheme is unmodified from Luna's default, and ding.wav isn't associated with any system events at all. Find out what system events ding.wav is associated with in your sound setup; this will provide a starting point for finding the cause of the problem. If you have a lot of processes running Windows will take a long time to shutdown because it has to stop them all one at a time. Check your system tray or System Manager to see how many processes you have running that need to be stopped. When using System Manager you can also check for processes that you don't recognize. They can be signs of virus infections which can also cause computer slow-down.A friend of mine recently managed to get his computer infected with a whack of spyware that slowed his PC to a crawl. He had Spybot S & D, AdAware and Norton AV all running, but none of them were catching the particular spyware programs he'd been infected with. I found a program online called GIANT Antispyware (you can download a demo version....apparently you can't; M$ bought them out a week ago ) that was able to identify and eliminate many of the infections. We "fixed" his PC by reformatting, but I understand that you don't want to do that. I recommend searching the web to see if you can find another program, similar to GIANT's Antispyware, that will search your PC for infections other programs may have missed. This is by no means a final solution to any of your issues, but I hope it will at least provide you with a starting point. Post back with any progress and/or further roadblocks, and we will help you as best we can. Good luck, and welcome to MSFN.

Thanks prathapml and Alanoll. I meant to mention qchain.exe (I made the same silly mistake on my cd), but I went off on a tangent and it must have slipped my mind.

What theme (if any) are you applying as a part of your uA setup? Bliss.jpg will only be applied if the default Luna theme is applied.

There are a few possible solutions: 1. Use RyanVM's update pack, as suggested by S0mE0nesMiNd1. You can download it here. Complete instructions are provided by Ryan himself on that site. 2. brian873 started a thread here where he posted a set of batch files to automate the integration process to some extent. I believe he is in the process of implementing some changes and will be posting an updated version soon. The current version does work, but some knowledge of command scripting is required to modify it to your particular environment. 3. To the best of my knowledge, all post-SP2 hotfixes support the /integrate command. (This is the principle that allowed Brian and I to create our scripts.) Simply download the redistributable versions of the hotfixes and then execute from the command line as follows: <HotfixFilename> /passive /integrate:<XPSP2SourceFilesPath> Make sure there is no space between the : after integrate and the path to your xp source files. Ryan's update pack is probably the easiest route for anyone who doesn't require complete control over their environment. In a business environment where some of the additional changes made by Ryan's pack may not be appropriate, I would suggest either using the batch scripts created by Brian and I or doing it manually.